The recent lockdown has meant that video conferencing has become the de-facto method of business communication with the rest of your team or customers. In essence it has turned us all into video stars! Eminent Psychologist, Jerome Bruner, suggested that people remember 80% of things they see as compared to only 10% of what they hear (along with 20% recall of written communication).

 Since visual communication is clearly more powerful than auditory communications for the average person, have you ever stopped to consider what you might do to improve the way you set-up for video conference calls? Follow our 3 step guide:

1. Consider lighting: Where the light needs to be, other lights or ambient brightness in the room.. Oh and brush yer hair first :). If you are in an office with no windows you can use an inexpensive desk lamp (bulb) right over your lens of your built-in camera and centred to it, which will be relatively flattering as long as it is facing towards you. Obviously other lights in the room will effect the desired outcome so this needs to be dampened or managed in another way - eg. other lights off, blinds closed, or subdued - never have light shining up from underneath your chin – this will do you no favours! If you have a window, we would suggest you have the window behind the laptop lid, again to illuminate your face. Don’t have any lights shining towards the lens or from behind you - unless you want to display the same skin tones as Dracula!

2. Consider the camera angle: this should be facing towards you (obviously) but not at the same height, just slightly angled down towards you giving your face some depth and texture, approximately at where your hairline starts. If your laptop or computer camera is sitting on a table surface that is too low then stick it on a box, or you could consider a bar stool height adjustable chair. Remember no one wants to be looking up someone nose! Angle the lid of the laptop or the screen monitor so that you are centred on the screen when you see your image. Because the light is already centred to the lens, the symmetry makes the person presenting look a lot better. Note that many laptops have wide angle lenses so this needs to be taken into consideration. Move the laptop away so that you ‘look’ normal and not wide or exaggerated or bloated. Also, make sure that there is a good border of plain colour (white or grey is good) around your head silhouette. Complicated backgrounds will add confusion and likely to distract the audience. You want people to be looking at you and not reading something on your wall behind you!

3. Consider how you look: when people are on a call they tend to look at the other person or people on the screen, or alternatively look at themselves. For this reason, it is better to look into the actual lens as this is where the person you are talking to will be focusing. You will be directly addressing them in the same way you would if the meeting was face to face. This will increase engagement and provides for better focus for the call. Maybe some make up if you feel you need it (even if only to make you feel better).   Thanks for reading. We will be covering the set-up of standalone external communication hardware (such as cameras and microphones) in a future post. Comments on this post and suggestions for future posts are very welcome. Please feel free to share. If you have any questions you can email us at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..